


Tales from Evening Fall

by ninemoons42



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Familial Abuse, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Fanart, Inspired by Music, Introspection, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, Japanese Wedding, Kimono, M/M, Musicians, Past Abuse, Poetry, San-san-ku-do, Spring, Supernatural Elements, Swords & Fencing, Tengu, Three cups thrice - nine times, Weddings, Wingfic, Writing on Skin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-09
Updated: 2012-07-02
Packaged: 2017-11-03 08:29:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/379364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42





	1. An Evening's Rapture

**Author's Note:**

  * For [keio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/keio/gifts).



title: An Evening’s Rapture  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**ninemoons42**](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)  
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]  
characters: Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr  
rating: R  
notes: Inspired by the work of the amazing [Keio](http://kannibal.tumblr.com), whose sketches of the Evening - a/k/a Erik as a tengu, watching over Charles the young lord in his mountain retreat - have been magnificent (not to mention incendiary). [This particular portrait](http://kannibal.tumblr.com/post/20957958269/fingerpainting-the-evening-on-the-ipad-again) was such rocket fuel for me, honestly.  
PWP, watching someone sleep, holding hands, kimono - these are just a few of my favorite things.

  
He may cross the young lord’s threshold with his usual silence - but his eyes, and the rustle of his feathers, must give away his agitation. The moon is high in the sky, _yin_ essence washing the mountain and its slopes in cold silvery light. It is late, and he has spent hours arbitrating a dispute between two families of badger spirits, and now only one light is left in the young lord’s home, in his little study: the guttering candle in its lamp casting both feeble light and wavering shadow over the low writing table.

A few feet away, almost completely lost in the deep night settling over the room, is a heap of silk and sleeves. The young lord breathes gently, slowly, curled into himself, wrapped up in an extra robe that serves him for a blanket. His dark hair in its soft curls is barely visible against the mats.

The Evening dispels his wings with a thought. Now he can sit down easily, next to the desk, close enough to touch.

He thinks perhaps he should be distressed by the strange, nameless feeling that makes him settle on his knees next to the sleeper. That gentleness that stays his hand, even as he pulls away the material covering the young lord’s face - distant scent of pine trees and ash and musk that fills up his senses - revealing closed eyes, soft mouth hanging open just a little, red lips shaping every near-silent breath. Dark eyelashes like a fan of shadows over skin paler than the cold moon. Shapely hands, loosely closed - one still clutching the material of his own sleeve, the other wedged lightly beneath his cheek.

The young lord spends his days writing poetry - he has a definite talent for it, when he writes about the seasons, the conventional images somehow coming to life in his hands, concealing truth and wit in every verse. Decisive and graceful penmanship, brushstrokes full of intent. Blue ink against rough paper, staining his fingers.

The Evening reaches out, then, and takes the hand wrapped loosely in silk.

The young lord reacts slowly, sweetly sleep-muddled: fingers tightening, a pull that is as inexorable as it is gentle - the Evening must follow its motion, must fall toward him, inevitable - down, crashing softly together, a stolen breath of a kiss.

When the Evening opens his eyes the young lord is smiling at him, just barely awake. “I’m sorry,” is the quiet whisper. “I should have stayed awake to wait for you.”

The fault is _his_ , the Evening knows that, and just as he draws breath to disabuse the young lord of his silly notions he’s being hauled back in, and this time the kiss is a demand.

Well, this is more enjoyable than a conversation.

He takes over the kiss and the young lord sighs permission into his mouth, permission he doesn’t need, and the kiss is rough now: the Evening holds him in place with one hand around his throat and the other digging into his shoulder, pushing aside layers of silk to seize the softer skin beneath. He plunders the young lord’s mouth again and again, proprietary sweep of tongue against teeth, drinking him in. He sets a deliberate pace, and before long he can feel the pulse in the young lord’s blood, rapid beat against his fingertips, and he savors his need with a smile that he brands into every further kiss.

“Oh,” the young lord murmurs, “ _please,_ ” when he lets him draw a breath.

There is no point in resisting that, the Evening thinks, not when it’s been offered so beautifully, and he pushes the young lord’s robes off his shoulders, pooling around them both - he bears him down into the smooth material, kisses and nips at his mouth possessively - almost enough to draw blood and a soft cry, and when he sucks ink-dark bruises into his white throat the young lord keens near-silent encouragement, hands skittering up and down the Evening’s arms, desperately clinging.

This time he twists nimbly, moves the young lord up and over to straddle him, so he can look up and in the shadows and pale light he misses the strange, clear blue of those eyes, but he can see how dark they are - overtaken with desire.

“Feel that,” the Evening whispers, and holds him firmly by the hips, down into his need, and he gets such a lovely groan in response, the young lord completely lost in him now, riding him, broken cries falling from his lips. In the next instant he strips them both, skin to skin and sweet scent and sweat, and he doesn’t know whose groan it is that falls into the space between them, hazy shadow of _want_ , of _joining_.

He does recognize the quiet cries spilling from the young lord’s mouth - he comes so undone so easily; he’s so beautifully responsive, and the Evening has kept him waiting long enough.

“Say you want me, beautiful one,” the Evening growls, fiercely.

The young lord’s eyes fly open, and the Evening catches his breath at the promise in them, at the pure beauty and power of him. “Yes, I want you. Now and always.”

Inevitable. Perfect.

The Evening bows to his - their - fate.

He puts the young lord on his back, kisses him hungrily - the young lord keens and arches up into him, frantically, and there is just enough time to prepare him, and at last the Evening presses into him, sweet agony of coming together, and he swallows the young lord’s triumphant cry in a deep, biting kiss.

“Please, please,” the young lord cries, and faster and faster they move, struggling together, overpowering white-hot pleasure, until there’s nothing else but the slide of their bodies, until the Evening is all but blinded by it, until the young lord’s voice is all he knows, until the world and the moon flees away and there is nothing but _them_.

After, the Evening submits to the young lord’s touch, lets him pull in close, puts his hands in dark, sweat-tangled hair.

“Stay,” the young lord murmurs.

The Evening does.  



	2. Night's Wings

title: Night's Wings  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**ninemoons42**](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)  
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]  
characters: Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr  
rating: R  
notes: More almost-PWP with kimonos, and this time there are actual wings involved. The haiku in these chapter are mine, and are not very good at that, but I hope they will suffice.

He wakes up with a start. The dream releases him, but gradually. Faint impressions of water washing at his feet, of looking up into a blue sky and thinking of death and of darkness and of a terrible weighted destiny. 

He is alone. This is not new to him. The servants have their instructions.

He shivers, suddenly, and he makes a small sound of dismay, and he pulls the glossy crimson robe draped over his back closer, and he thinks about slipping his arms into the sleeves and huddling in for warmth. 

The world is a wash of weak silver light around him, and if he looks to the west, he can see the faint faraway sun begin its descent to the distant horizon.

The young lord has never been a devotee of winter or of its snows, no matter how inspiring he might find it, no matter how good it is to spend hours looking out over a landscape of bared branches and white snow in drifts everywhere; he much prefers to be someplace warmer, and that is why he moves his study into the innermost chambers of the little mountain mansion once the season turns and the lined robes are taken out of storage.

Reluctantly he moves, and in so doing he rises from his makeshift couch, and he barely notices the colors splayed out beneath him – the bed he makes for himself in winter when he doesn’t want to return to his actual sleeping chambers. The soft old robes are too misshapen to wear now, too well-worn to be saved with needle and thread, but still retain much of their warmth. He has considered consigning the robes to his servants, but with each day that passes he finds himself more and more reluctant to give them up. The familiar patterns settle his mind into a somnolent peace. Gray and yellow and blue, like the colors in his dream.

He thinks of a poem, then, and he shifts up to his knees, and moves toward his writing desk, in the warmest corner of the room, wrapped in pale shadows. 

Even before he lights the lamp he knows there is something _new_ there – and sure enough, the flickering candlelight reveals a folded piece of roughly meshed paper next to his inkstone.

The young lord takes the note up in his hands. Dark brown paper flecked with blue and green and gray. There is something pinned in it – a black feather, tipped with the faintest faded shade of scarlet. The feather is longer than his forearm and by the candle he examines the odd paleness of the shaft, the asymmetrical vane, a handful of shades of gray mixed in with the black and the red.

The hollow point of the feather is tipped in midnight-blue ink, and the young lord glances at his inkstone, at his unused brushes, and unfolds the note.

_Sweetly sleep, trusting,  
Your face in moon-touched shadows  
Puts low night to shame._

He laughs to himself, quietly; he doesn’t need to think about the identity of his correspondent. The feather is more than signature enough. And gruff the Evening may be, abrupt and sometimes reckless in his movements, but he cannot be called coarse, even if he cannot always be called refined; there is a certain art to his writing, if his downstrokes are a little too rough and trail off abruptly.

The young lord thinks for a moment, and he prepares his ink and takes up his brush and the characters slip off onto the rough paper, below the scratched lines of the first verse.

_Come back to me, o  
Night’s guardian, sweet strange watcher,  
Shadow of the moon._

And an image from his dream:

_Through blue skies falling,  
Snatching up death, night, ending,  
Thwarted destiny._

He sets the brush down on its rest, a roughly carved black bird – a gift from one of his friends in the capital. 

There is silence, and night’s shadow grows long outside his windows, and then – the young lord _feels_ rather than _sees_ the flutter of swift movement across the thin paper walls. A soft, steady breath, and another, and another, and the heavy beat of wings in flight coming closer and closer.

Nothing happens for a long, charged moment.

The young lord smiles, and rinses his brush, and he settles in more comfortably on his knees. He waits, breathless with anticipation; he picks up the feather and examines the ink staining its point. He shivers, and he absently pulls his crimson robe close, and he wonders if maybe the Evening could be persuaded to write on his skin. He wants to bear the Evening’s marks all over him, though there is no one here to see but himself.

Even if the only eyes to see are his own and those of the Evening’s, he wants to be claimed and taken.

He _wants_ , and his thoughts scatter past him, slip through his outstretched fingers so he cannot catch at them with ink and brush and feather, and how he’d like that, because he has so many things he’d like to say to his...guest, but then there is a great silent rush of _landing_ , there is a step on the _engawa_ and the paper doors are sliding open.

Night has come.

“Hello,” the young lord calls softly.

His heart beats in time with the Evening’s slow, deliberate tread, and it is all he can do to keep his eyes down, pretending to look through his papers, as the _tengu_ approaches him and out of the corner of his eye he sees those wings shiver, once, and then fade into shadow and into nothing.

The young lord looks up, and soundlessly catches his breath.

The Evening is standing over him, is holding a hand out to him.

The young lord smiles, and bows a little, and holds up his hand. “One moment, if you please.”

“More writing, beautiful one? Your hands are still covered with yesterday’s ink.”

“So they are.” He pushes up his sleeve and takes up the feather – deliberately, he dips the end in the last of his ink, and he writes as best as he can on his other wrist: _heaven_. The tip of the feather scratches, but not unpleasantly – a sharp fleeting stroke of pure sensation. 

When he’s done he gets to his feet, trying not to shake and failing. He smiles at the Evening, and pretends to ignore the responding flash of _heat_ in those unfathomable dark eyes. “So what is one more mark to add to all the rest.”

The Evening’s eyes narrow knowingly. “Do you even know what you are asking for. What you are courting.”

The young lord smiles, then, and he puts his hand in that of his visitor’s. “Truthfully, I should hope so.”

He lets himself be pulled to his feet, and the next thing he knows he’s being pinned in place with little more than a look and a huge hand tightening once in warning around his wrist; he looks up, and he only has time to gasp in a breath before everything blurs down to eyes burning with a strange light, and the Evening captures his mouth in a searing kiss.

He knows he’s not supposed to move, he’s not supposed to do anything else but give in – but he wants, and he closes his eyes and cranes closer, up on his toes until he’s yanked back down again and this time the Evening’s hand is on his shoulder, pressing him down.

The young lord groans, long and low in his throat, and he’s being bent backwards and there’s a touch in the small of his back that has nothing to do with hands and is too soft and gentle besides – and he pulls away and he knows what he’ll see as soon as he opens his eyes.

He catches himself thinking of a poem, and he claws for the Evening’s shoulders, leans in to whisper into dark gray hair, coarse strands catching in his fingers.

_Into dark skies fall  
As though toward a lover,  
Caught and shaking, safe._

“Such trust you have, beautiful one, when I can break you like a reed,” the Evening growls. Shadows shift across his wings as he wraps them more closely around their bodies.

“You wouldn’t,” the young lord murmurs, though he shivers in anticipation. “Not unless I wanted you to.”

He gets a quiet laugh for that – and then the Evening kisses him again, and he loses himself in the sensations. He’s burning up, he’s gasping for every breath, he’s reduced to frantic whispers, and the Evening sounds just as broken as he is as they fall over the edge of their need. But he’s safe, he’s held, and he _trusts_ , and he holds on to the Evening with everything left in him.

This time, when he wakes, he’s not alone, and he’s still wrapped up in wings and warmth, enough to banish winter’s chill.


	3. Music of the Night

title: Music of the Night  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**ninemoons42**](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)  
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]  
characters: Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr  
rating: PG-13  
notes: And now we have plot, and the shadows of the young lord's past are on view for the Evening to think about. Writing music taken from [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L24Nb4CJzV4&feature=related) and [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_guyo_oAnw&feature=related). 

It is not surprising that he finds himself here, in this hamlet of a secluded retreat. Scattered through the tiny rooms are the little signs of human presence - a compact and sturdy writing desk, scrolls hung up in alcoves, a faded pomander of chrysanthemum in one small window. A set of cups and a small bottle of sake set in a pan of water over a brazier, within arm's reach. 

The Evening is sitting just inside one of the doors into the house, and he is watching the moon rise over the mountains that are his home. Cold golden light washes away the fading shadows of dust. Thin clouds like spiders' webs fleeing on a brisk breeze, shadows streaking across the room, there and gone again.

He is alone, temporarily. His ears can catch every nuance of movement in the little house, however, and he can hear footsteps already moving back in his direction.

Thirty nights. A month of coming to this place, of passing the hours with _go_ and _sake_ and conversation. There is much he now knows about the young lord: he knows why the man has chosen to make his home here when he should have been a favorite at court. He knows about the indifferent lady mother and her second husband, who took a particularly brutal delight in insulting the young lord. He knows that the young lord has wealth in his own name, a modest amount, just enough to live on. 

He knows that the young lord has repeatedly refused the offer of a title from his father's family - that he has instead passed his ranks on to a younger cousin, a bright slip of a girl with a masterful talent in poetry.

The footsteps come to a stop behind him, and the Evening draws in a deep breath - he smells the rocks of the mountains, the great old growth of the dark forest slumbering all around, sharp bamboo and distant night-blooming flowers. And he smells the ink on the young lord's hands, mixing in with the strange scent of scorched salt and honey and seashell and cloves - the young lord never writes so well as when he writes of the faraway western seashore on which he was born, and his scent reinforces that connection. 

Incongruous, here, but it is one of the things that draws the Evening to him, part of the relentless pull between them. The pull has something to do with the young lord's strange blue eyes, as deep and fathomless as the sea and the storms on that old coast. It has something to do with the strange strength in his fragile hands, broken fingers badly healed: injuries that make the young lord shiver in every cold breeze, and yet he stays here, in the misty-cool mountains.

The Evening thinks of nights entwined together, freed of all the barriers between them, shattering release and afterwards lying sweaty and exhausted on silk and straw. He thinks of the soft cries that fall so easily from the young lord's mouth, and of walking the fine knife-edge of need and desire. Finger-shaped bruises on the young lord's skin, precisely placed.

Now the young lord is clearing his throat behind him and the Evening shifts, turns partway around.

The young lord is sitting in the corner of the room, and the candlelight throws shifting shadows and smoke into his smiling eyes. The Evening can clearly see the strands of silver woven into the young lord's dark hair, even from across the room, and he can see the tremor in the delicately crooked fingers.

There is a beautiful _koto_ on the floor in front of the young lord: fine-grained paulownia wood, sea pebbles inlaid into the body to mark the various tunings, and the Evening does not know much about this kind of music but even he can sense that the _koto_ is old, older than the man about to play it.

"I hope this will not offend," the young lord whispers now.

He is wearing a set of mottled ivory picks on his right hand; he takes a deep breath, pushes his sleeves out of the way, and his fingers hover over the strings for a moment - and then he begins to play. An easy mastery, broken hands and all - he plays with confidence and with a strange defiance; and to the Evening he looks like he's playing for his very heart and soul. 

He does have a small talent in this - every note shivers with his emotions, with the strange dark passion he keeps hidden behind sweet smiles and downcast eyes, even when that is precisely what the Evening craves about him.

But as soon as the short piece fades away into the night's silence and stillness the Evening merely remarks, "You ought to stick to your verses."

"Yes," the young lord laughs as he takes off the picks and moves away from the _koto_. "But you have been very kind to me, and you have not laughed at my poetry, and I am very grateful that you do not laugh at me now."

Instead of replying, the Evening merely beckons him over, and he pulls the young lord almost into his lap and seals their mouths together in a searing kiss.

As good a return gift as any, pleasure for pleasure - and he has to smile into the young lord's skin, drinking in his fervent assent.


	4. Morning's Touch

title: Morning's Touch  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**ninemoons42**](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)  
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]  
characters: Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr  
rating: PG  
notes: Part of [Tales from Evening Fall](http://archiveofourown.org/works/379364): a change of time, a change of scenery, for the young lord and the Evening.

Some whims, the young lord thinks to himself, are simply their own reward.

The sky is blue and vast and it stretches overhead in all directions. Uninterrupted by clouds, and the sun is a bright spark over the great peaks, and the young lord smiles and shades his eyes and squints at the valleys sprawling so far away beneath his feet. Down, down, into the mists and past the cliffs, sweet serene scene, and he is its only observer, and it could have been created just for him.

He takes a deep breath, and he transfers the walking stick from his left hand to his right, and he continues on up the winding mountain path. There are flowers dotting the grass at his feet, purple and white and yellow and vivid crimson - and the young lord stops and picks a spray of those flowers, tucks them into the fold of his robes, bright against the plain gray.

He's been turned out of his own house today, and he's been laughing about it all morning. His servants have picked today to clean the house, to take up all the mats for cleaning, to replace the pomanders hanging in all the windows - and he can hardly fault them their observance of the spring rituals. 

At the new moon, three nights from now, they will be observing the festival of the spring's coming. 

Of all the rituals and feasting sure to come, however, the young lord is only looking forward to one thing: he's waiting for the mountain cherries to burst into flowering glory. Already the branches on the trees in his gardens are nearly full of pale ivory buds and fresh green growth.

He hopes that the Evening will come to him then, and share in the strange glory of night-blooming, against the night and the faraway moon.

Up, and up, and this is his whim: to climb up the mountain looming over his little retreat. The young lord catches his breath, brushes the sweat away from his brow, and he sighs in relief when the path abruptly curves around out of sight.

He steps off the path and strides past the pine trees - half a dozen sturdy old ones standing close together, as if to share secrets in the whispers of their needles.

When he comes to a stop the great boulder and its sharp edges is sun-warmed, and it gives off a welcoming scent of dust. It throws a tiny patch of shadow, just enough for him to sit down in. 

The pines are a short distance away and he imagines the sap rising to the tops of the trees, imagines the smoky-fresh scent that he's been trying to capture for some time now in his incense blends. It seems to go well with his favorites, with salt and seashells, and he thinks he will certainly have time to try again, and again.

He only has himself to please, after all - himself and the Evening, when he comes, when he consents to stay for as long as a scent will linger in the sweet charged spaces between them.

The young lord sits down in a sort of cradle on the grass, like a nest on the ground for some poor fallen bird, surrounded by fallen boughs. Green blades rustle around his fingers when he puts his hands down, and the bright green and gray of this place is a vivid contrast to his own pale skin. His short exposure to this day's sun has already caused faint shadow-stars to appear on his wrists, on the backs of his hands.

Perhaps that will make the Evening laugh at him, he thinks. Or perhaps the Evening will count those stars, and the young lord shivers with the memory, remembering the piercing look in the other's eyes, remembering how he'd ended that night laid out and groaning and laid bare. 

The shadow of a bird on the wing crosses the sun - and he smiles, and remembers something else. He'd been born near the sea, and he'd spent countless hours running over sand and shore. He has memories of shouting back to the gulls, sharp hoarse cries over the endless sigh and crash of the waves. He remembers looking at himself in the little mirror in his room, remembers his own nut-brown skin and sunburnt nose and bright blue eyes, and it's a faraway memory, one of the few good ones from his childhood. Hours and years of running freely, of escaping the house that had brought him up, wild on the endless beach.

Now he is in the mountains, and he has almost become used to the frozen walls of eternal stone, and to his own paleness. Now he no longer has to bear any ill-will, any painful bruises, because now all the marks he carries on his skin are marks that he desires, marks that he willingly takes from the one who offers them to him.

Finger-shaped bruises on his forearm, as he pushes his sleeves up and reaches for his provisions. He eats a riceball thoughtfully, sips his water, knows he has to make it last.

Birds sing and call above him, and over all these other songs is the constant sigh of the wind.

He smiles, and he closes his eyes, and he doesn't know when he slips into sleep - he only knows that he's dreaming of silver sands and of sunlight sparking off deep water, of eyes like a sea-storm and like gray shifting shadows.

When he wakes, he's still alone - but he looks up into the patch of blue sky above the pines and he almost, almost catches a glimpse of a familiar set of wings. Familiar and well-known. He stays where he is, sleepy smile touched by strange sweet knowledge, and he breathes in the mountain scent, the smell of flight and of freedom.

Finally there's a voice addressing the young lord, low and grave melody, a voice he loves. 

"I've not had a reason to come up here for a long time," the Evening murmurs.

How strange to see him here, crowned with the bright blue sky. 

How right he was to come to him here.

The young lord tilts his head at him, considering, teasing. "I am not intruding? This is your home - this is your mountain, your domain - am I unwelcome here?"

"Never unwelcome."

He can read the Evening's expressions easily enough, and he can hear the spark of sadness in those words. 

Best not to think of the past now. Think of this time, this place, where glorious spring is laid out around and for them.

The young lord reaches for his walking stick, and he gets to his knees, preparing to rise - and then the Evening is taking his hands, is lifting him to his feet. 

He could fall into those eyes, the young lord thinks, and he's astonished when the Evening smiles at him - he reaches for that smile, traces freckled fingers over the lines in the other's face, and he can feel the pulse in the air between them, gently trembling, as the Evening's eyes fall closed and he comes closer, closer than the young lord's touch. A sweet meeting, in this sky, in this place.


	5. Three Cups at Dawn

title: Three Cups at Dawn  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**ninemoons42**](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)  
word count: approx. 1090  
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]  
characters: Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr  
rating: PG-13  
notes: The finale to [Tales from Evening Fall](http://archiveofourown.org/works/379364). Unexpected idea was unexpected, and perhaps not entirely a surprise, considering what I'm going to be doing come the weekend.  
As always, all of this was for [Keio](http://kannibal.tumblr.com/). Thank you so much, dearest.

The Evening hurtles down the slope. 

Every sweep of his wings, every beat of his heart, every labored breath: all of himself, everything he still has left, every drop of blood he still has. All of it is for his burden, his precious one.

The young lord is so pale and so still and so cold.

"Hold on," the Evening says, and there are tears in his eyes and he doesn't care that they flow cold down his cheeks. 

He cries out to the mountain, to the spirits he commands, and his voice is a raucous echo down slope and into valley. He cries for succor, calls for aid, and the response is a powerful song that fills him up and he throws his every last drop of willpower into it. He is the path, he is every leaf in the forest, he is every feather in his wings, he is life flowing into the man in his arms.

 _Live,_ he thinks. _Live, by black feather and winter moon and falling star. Damn you. Live._

He would make it into a command if he only could. He would make the young lord obey him now, because they would not even be in this position if the foolish brave human had not thought to interfere.

Even if he closes his eyes, the Evening can still see every detail of the scene: the man in the tattered sleeves, ablaze against malevolent darkness. Hands holding a black-bladed sword aloft. Crimson blood running down his wrists, smeared over his face - wide, unblinking blue eyes in a red mask. 

The young lord's voice, ringing out in the cave. Shouting a prayer, a command, a summons - power flowing around and into the words, bringing them to life. 

Dark energy crackling everywhere, attack and defense, and the young lord's voice answering, full of authority and strength and a strange serene rage, until he was speaking into bleak black silence, until the world began to break around him.

Until his words began to reshape the world, to restore it - energy flowing back through him, and from him into the Evening, linking them together. Enough to allow the Evening to finish the fight, to tear through the shadow-demon with his hands, his claws.

The Evening remembers turning back to the young lord - remembers drawing a breath to begin chastising him for his foolhardy rush, only to see those blue eyes darken and suddenly fall closed. He remembers seeing the man fall, remembers a sigh and then a profound silence. 

He pulls the young lord closer, now, and he redoubles his speed, and finally, finally he sees the cave mouth and he plunges into it. He doesn't need to be able to see to find his way.

Everything in him now is given to one task.

He has to make sure the young lord opens his eyes once again.

It is the least he can do to start paying back the debt of his own life.

The hours pass by, too slow and yet too quickly, for in one instant the Evening gains the scant shelter of his own wards and rocky chambers - and in the next, so it seems to him, midnight has come and the moon is now only tinged with red, a distant light in a brooding sky.

There is something incongruous next to the young lord's feet: a lacquered tray, and on it there are three cups and a flask of _sake_. He had intended them for a gift to the young lord.

Here, now, the Evening looks at his hands; he never sees them tremble. All he sees is the memory of the young lord's hands brushing over his face - he remembers his surprise, looking up at a face that should not have been in that cave. He remembers the young lord smiling - and then taking up his sword in once-shattered hands.

All the Evening sees is the faint rise and fall of the young lord's chest. He has to strain his ears to hear the thin breaths - until the breaths stop, and then - the young lord gasps out loud, and nearly flies to his feet, and the Evening helps him sit back.

"Are you safe?" the young lord asks, frantic, eyes wild. _"Are you all right?"_

"Foolish, _foolish_ child," the Evening replies, and then the young lord is in his arms. They are holding each other, clinging desperately. "How could you have been so stupid, beloved? How could you have saved me?"

"I could not leave you to your death," the young lord growls.

"And I could not have forgiven myself had you gone to yours."

"I am here."

The Evening pulls away, then, and holds the young lord at arm's length. "You will never do anything so stupid again."

Somehow, the young lord manages a sort of breathless laugh in response. "Will you stop protecting these rocks? These mountains? Will you leave your home defenseless? No. So I will stand with you, no matter how feeble I am, no matter how little my strength."

The Evening turns away for a moment, overwhelmed, and then - he pulls the tray forward, and he pours into the first cup, the smallest of the three nested together. He offers it to the young lord. "Drink. Three sips."

The young lord obeys him, eyes wide - but he doesn't say a word, not even when the Evening refills that small cup and then empties it in the same manner - in three sips.

"You know what you are doing," is all the comment the young lord offers. He is still pale and drawn and haggard, but his hands are steady as he takes the second cup.

"I should have done this on that first night, when you came to me," the Evening replies. "Would that I had known back then how we were tied together."

They exchange the last and largest cup in silence.

And then the Evening looks up, at the young lord's face.

"Not even this can be cut," the young lord says, and the Evening leans into the touch of his hand. "Not even through the lives we might lead in time to come."

"Tied together as we always have been," the Evening says, and he watches the resolve in those eyes, blue reflecting the dawn. 

And then, finally, the young lord pulls him closer, and the Evening follows him, gladly.

His young lord, as he is the young lord's Evening.

_owari_


End file.
